Lyrics for I Dreamed A Dream as interpreted by fallacies

I Dreamed A Dream Lyrics
[Fantine is left alone, unemployed and destitute]

[FANTINE]
There was a time when men were kind
When their voices were soft
And their words inviting
There was a time when love was blind
And the world was a song
And the song was exciting
There was a time
Then it all went wrong

I dreamed a dream in time gone by
When hope was high
And life worth living
I dreamed that love would never die
I dreamed that God would be forgiving
Then I was young and unafraid
And dreams were made and used and wasted
There was no ransom to be paid
No song unsung, no wine untasted

But the tigers come at night
With their voices soft as thunder
As they tear your hope apart
And they turn your dream to shame

He slept a summer by my side
He filled my days with endless wonder
He took my childhood in his stride
But he was gone when autumn came

And still I dream he'll come to me
That we will live the years together
But there are dreams that cannot be
And there are storms we cannot weather

I had a dream my life would be
So different from this hell I'm living
So different now from what it seemed
Now life has killed the dream I dreamed.



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nutty dolphin
06-20-2002

 Rated  +1 
I love this song, it's like a chid's view of the world, but now she's grown up, but she still dreams of her lost love, who took away her childhood. The closing line really strikes me, though :-"Now life has killed the dream I dreamed."

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Kiwidd
06-20-2002

 Rated  +2 
Yeah, the last line really gets your attention.

BTW, isn't "Les Miserables" French?

:angel:

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nutty dolphin
06-21-2002

 Rated  0 
yup, the novel was written by Victor Hugo, who I think is a french guy.

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loserdork
07-04-2002

 Rated  0 
Yeah, Hugo was the big Napoleon opposer, and he wrote Les Miz about the French Revolution. Pretty much the whole second act takes place in Paris.
The whole musical is so damned powerful. Fantine and Eponine will fucking break your heart.

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1 Reply  · 
1832
07-30-2002

 Rated  -1 
in the musical you never know who "he" is, but in the book you'll find shes singing about her ex-lover who she thought she was in love with. i think she sees how naive she was, and that she has to grow up and face reality.

also, les mis is not about the french revolution.

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PndrLw
07-30-2002

 Rated  0 
What are you talking about 1832? The story line revolves around the French Revolution. Have you ever seen it or read the book?

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Harriet_Potter
08-20-2002

 Rated  0 
I love the verse:
"He slept a summer by my side
He filled my days with endless wonder
He took my childhood in his stride
But he was gone when autumn came."
Mind you, the whole song is so fantastic it sends shivers down my spine. I am going to see a west end musical soon, :D but we think this'll be unsutible for my 8 year old sister :(. Any advice that would please an 8 year old girl, as well as the rest of the family? (don't say joseph because we've seen that already :))




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StruckingFuggle
09-28-2002

 Rated  0 
I'd like to comment to PndrLw that Les Miserables -isn't- about the French Revolution (at least the musical) it's about love, in many different forms - be it the love of a father for a child, the love of money, love of liberty, or the love of one never returned by another. It just uses the French Revolution as a framework in which to tell the story.

...Wow, that sounded more pretentious than I would have wished... :-)

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lilqtfrmguam12
03-09-2003

 Rated  0 
the musical is about love but its also centered around the revolution. its about finding your own righting your wrongs and finding yourself all throughout the life and times of the french revolution ... n this song is about her daughters father ((i forgot if htey were married)) and now shes alone and facing life that way and how when you are young you dont think about consequences you live for the moment. ok im done enjoy and if u havent seen the musical you def. should

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PRtwilight85
06-18-2003

 Rated  0 
it's awesome. well, the musical puts more emphasis on the revolution part of the story and mroe on the mushy love part, but the book shows that the revolution is really important and an integral part of the story as well. but anyway, it's an excellent musical because you can really identify with all of hte characters even though they'r eall just a bunch of french dudes in some war over a century ago. the setting doesnt matter, the characters are so human that you can completely emphasize with their emotions and everything.
and this song rocks. a very emotional song.

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RobertEdwardLee
12-23-2004

 Rated  +1 
French Revolution??

The French Revolution 'ended' in about 1797, leading to the Napoleonic Wars that would end in 1815 at Waterloo. The story STARTS in 1814 for God's sake!

The story is based around the Paris Uprisings

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liztomaz
04-17-2005

 Rated  0 
thank you robertedwardlee!

Well this really brings me to tears.

Fantine had been a carefree teen in love with a man named Felix Tholymes. She thought it'd mean something, but then one day, he abandones her. To top it all of, she's pregnant. After she gives birth, she leaves her home to find work. On the way she drops her daughter off at the Thenardier's Inn so they may watch her, who is the only one she loves. Now she has been working at a factory, making just enough to live and send money to her dear Cosette. That is, until one day she is fired. Now she is left, unloved and destitute, outside of the factory. She sings this song, remembering when things were better for her, when people cared, and she didn't have to live in grime. Her dream is the life she had before... carefree, happy and loved. Then the "tigers" come for her. They take things away from her (her love, her daughter, her source of income) and put her to shame. Then she remembers Felix, who had made her happy than ever. Then he took her childhood... her innocence and any possibility of a simple life again, and after summer was done, left her. Yet she still wishes he'll return to her, no matter what he has done to her. She hasn't been able to weather this storm, and won't in the end. She hoped for a better life, but he had ruined it. No matter how hopeful she had been, it has all been ruined ("now life has killed the dream I dream")

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Sehmara
04-26-2005

 Rated  0 
"in the musical you never know who "he" is"
Well, she never flat out says it, but it's pretty obvious from the lyrics:
"He slept a summer by my side
He filled my days with endless wonder
He took my childhood in his stride
But he was gone when autumn came."

Victor Hugo wrote the book while he was exiled from France for 20 or so years. So, yes, the book was originally in French, but the musical was written by Englishmen, I beleive. It premeired in 1985, and this year is the 20th anniversary.

"Les Miserables -isn't- about the French Revolution (at least the musical) it's about love."
Obviously, it has a lot to do about love, but you obviously can't have a musical that's just about one thing. Les Mis is primarily about the French Revution, but it's also about love, truth, right and wrong, justice, judgement, and other things.

Fantine is a very young mother, she was immature enough, by no fault of her own, to be wooed by the cheap lies and cliches of a young man just looking for a fling. She fets pregnant and he leaves her. Her life changes with the seasons. She does what she must to stay alive and must give away her child, the only thing left in her life, because it is best for Cosette.

This is Hugo's effective way of manipulating emotions to get his point across. Like most people in France at that time, Fantine lived in poverty. She is a young, single mother, however, so the audience's pity grows. We see that she is still very innocent and immature, the only thing she's ever done wrong. Everyone is that vulnerable at some point, but Fantine must pay for it with everything she holds dear. In the end, I don't think she ever grows up completely, but her enduring innocence enchants the audience.

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AnInvertedLove
09-24-2005

 Rated  0 
Ah, I adore this song. Though I have say half the Fantines I've heard are sort of iffy. The song is lovely though.



Though I do have to say why people keep on thinking Les Miserables is about the French Revolution? And they're being so indignant and uppity about it. No, it wasn't about the French Revolution. Just look at the dates. -And yes, I have read the book and seen the musical (which I worship! does anybody know if the national tour is REALLY closing in the States?-

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iluvfarroba
10-30-2007

 Rated  0 
i love the part of "so diferent from this hell i'm living" and "there are storms that cannot weather" those two lines are pure poetry and the singing is heart killing..., check out allison crowe version of the song...it's amazing

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liliecv
04-12-2009

 Rated  0 
beautiful.

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1 Reply  ·  General Comment
pinksalamander
08-12-2009

 Rated  0 
To bring attention to all those who think that Les Miserables is about the French Revolution, it isn't. The French Revolution was over by the end of the 1700s. The battle parts of the musical are set in 1832, so three decades later. The real-life person 'General Lamarque' is mentioned several times in the musical (In Look Down: 'Only one man, and thats Lamarque, speaks for the people here below' and later when Gavroche runs on and shouts 'General Lamarque is dead!'). Lamarque died in June 1832, and his death prompted the start of the June Rebellion (from ABC Cafe: 'Lamarque is dead, his death is the hour of fate, the peoples man, his death is the sign we await!') which only lasted one day before the majority of the Parisian students were killed. The rest of the characters are purely fictional, and of course the entire musical is based on Victor Hugo's (who also wrote Notre Dame) book of the same name which was published in 1862.

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General Comment
tavizon
02-16-2010

 Rated  0 
this song is about a girl that falls in love but it doesn't turn out to what she expected so she is heart broken and now living a whole different life

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General Comment
kunsan
02-17-2010

 Rated  0 
Beautiful and moving song, I agree.
Could anyone clarify the last but one line, though?

I had a dream my life would be
So different from this hell I'm living
So different now from what it seemed
Now life has killed the dream I dreamed.

"So different now from what it seemed"... I'm afraid I don't really get the "from what it seemed" part. Would anyone be as kind as to shed their light on this?

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My Interpretation
Rhindleby
06-05-2010

 Rated  0 
@Kunsan

I'm only 14 years old, but this is how I perceive the line:

"I had a dream my life would be
So different from this hell I'm living
So different now from what it seemed
Now life has killed the dream I dreamed."

When she sings "So different now from what it seemed" she means that when she was younger the thought world was a kind, happy place of dreams and she thought when she grew up her life would be perfect, but now that she's older the world is a much darker, sadder place than she thought, and her life is very different to what it seemed to be when she was younger.
She dreamed (or wished) that her life would be wonderful and happy when she was older, but as she grew up her life got harder.
When she finishes with "Now life has killed the dream I dreamed." She means that things didn't work out how she'd wanted them to, and instead of living her dream, her real, sad life proved to her that she would never have her dream.

I could be wrong, but that's what it means to me. Hope it kind of helped!

It's such a sad song, and a tragic ending for poor Fantine. I absolutely love the musical.



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General Comment
clovus
06-15-2010

 Rated  0 
It’s bizarre that Les Mis gets confused with the French Revolution. In the book and the play, the uprising is crushed by the end (but they are free in heaven). I can understand mixing up the dates, but don’t people find it confusing that the revolutionaries lose? Why didn’t the Bastille get stormed? The French Revolution actually overthrew the government. It wasn’t just a Parisian street fight.

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General Comment
reginaldcranmer
06-29-2011

 Rated  0 
the musical is based on the novel by victor hugo, set in france in the early 1800s.

france went through more than one revolution, apart from the more famous one that everyone thinks of (bastille, marie antoinette, etc): [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/July_Revolution]

the unabridged version of the novel is ridiculously long but amazing and well worth plowing through to get the full backstory on the characters- fantine is in love with tholomyes and she and her girlfriends and their boyfriends are all bffs and such. then the guys decide to "go back to society" and ditch their girls. unfortunately for fantine, "she had given herself to tholomyes as to a husband, and the poor girl had his child." so she's single and preggers. she decides to give her baby girl (cosette) to an innkeeper and his wife (the thenardiers) and pay them to raise her daughter in a normal life. except she doesn't know that the thenardiers are awful and are criminals and treat cosette like shit and keep scamming fantine out of more money. anyway so fantine gets fired from her job and has to sell herself (including her hair and her teeth) in order to pay for her daughter's well-being.

that being said, this song is about the loss of youth and innocence, the loss of carefree days, the loss of faith in love, the loss of one's position in society...about being crushed by life being left alone. it's beautiful.



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General Comment
padmew21
04-23-2012

 Rated  0 
To me I dreamed a dream is about lost dreams, the loss of innocence and youth, and young foolish love. Fantine was striped of her childhood by a man she loved. Because she she was so young she feel into the man's trap which was foolish and show how naive and innocent she was. Yet she has grown and realized her mistake and how he has taken away many things from her including her ability to believe in her dreams. Her dreams were once beautiful, filled with love and hope. Now her dreams have been crushed and lost never to be fulfilled. LIfe has killed all her dreams.

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General Comment




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